Still Waters
by pfangirl
Summary: A standalone action adventure set beneath the Mediterranean Sea. Lara Croft sets out to uncover the truth behind an ancient mystery involving god kings, power struggles and the quest for immortality. In the process, she finds more than she bargained for… about herself. Set six years after Yamatai, blending both Reboot and Classic Lara. No Rise of the Tomb Raider references.
1. Chapter 1

If only it could always be like this.

She lazily scissored her legs from the hip, and felt her body glide forward through the water.

In addition to the weight of her dive gear, she had a good ten pounds of lead strapped around her waist and shoved into the pockets of her buoyancy compensator. Here, though, the burden seemed meaningless.

Her every movement was effortless.

Mountains would remain her first love, but there she was always cognisant of the strain on her body – the way her quads started to quiver, the icy rawness in her throat echoing the sensation in her fingertips, and the realisation that no matter how deeply she inhaled, she wasn't getting the oxygen she craved. At some point her physical strength would be utterly depleted and she'd have to switch to mental reserves to complete the ascent.

By contrast, on the ocean bottom she felt free of her skin.

Free of everything.

She rolled onto her back and looked up at the water's surface. She wasn't actually that deep – swimming along at a depth of maybe 65 feet – but it seemed like she was contemplating the ceiling of a completely different world.

Down here she felt completely disconnected from Man's domain, and its myriad of problems.

It was liberating.

There was a reason that so many cultures described underwater utopias in their folk tales; why figures like Urashima Taro lived so happily with magical sea folk. It was supreme wish fulfilment for anyone hankering after escape from their terrestrial lives. Troubles, much like physical weight, were largely irrelevant in this setting.

Why wouldn't sailors leap in? You didn't even need a buxom mermaid to make it enticing.

Though that inclusion certainly wouldn't hurt.

Smiling around her mouthpiece, she flipped once more onto her stomach and focused on the seabed. She was supposed to be concentrating – scanning the algae-coated rocks and coral for jarring, man-made shapes – but it was so easy to let her mind wander. Easier than in the shower, or those evenings she set herself up, Merlot in hand, in Croft Manor's vast library.

She was aware of the danger down here. Even if you weren't drunk with nitrogen narcosis, it was possible to lose all sense of self-preservation in the blanket of blue.

Seductive. Suicidally hypnotic.

Pondering this point at least reminded her to check the dive computer strapped to her wrist. Conditions were ideal: no currents to battle; water so warm so she could get away with wearing only a shorty. Combined with other factors – her supreme relaxation for one – it meant that her air supply was lasting longer than expected. Without pushing it, she still had a good hour left to entertain her lotus-eating wants.

 _To stay here forever…_

That would be nice.

* * *

On or under it, water was an element she'd been supremely comfortable in her entire life. Even though it smothered senses that made the millisecond difference between life and death, she still felt at home in it. Hell, she'd even lost her virginity on the S.S. Endurance a few weeks short of her twentieth birthday.

And the older she'd grown, the more she prized the sea for the solitude it provided.

Because Lara Croft wasn't a people's person.

She studied the best and worst of human achievement through history. As over-dramatic as it sounded, she routinely saved the world. But she didn't have any particular faith in her species.

It was about more than the professional whispers behind her back, or the Daily Mail's insistence on snapping stuffed-face pics of her every time she visited Nando's post-expedition.

Lara had never been a team player. She'd preferred solo pursuits since childhood.

Looking back, it seemed she had always been apart. Even before she was branded with the othering status of orphan.

Sure, in adulthood she had many associates who'd metamorphosed into friends. She cared for them; there was very little she wouldn't do to help them if they were in distress. Truthfully, though, she didn't let any of them in. Not anymore. If they were butterflies fluttering about fresh out of chrysalis, she stood behind netting.

Physically available; emotionally aloof.

Guarded.

She was someone who would breeze into a party, entertain her circle of companions with a few choice phrases that demonstrated her cool wit, and then slip out the back door when no one was looking.

She lived without goodbyes.

It was better that way for everyone, or so she insisted.

Too many people had been hurt through association with her. Over half a decade later, Reyes's words still stung.

 _Seems anyone caught with you has a pretty low survival rate._

The surly ex-cop had made it off the island of course. But there was no denying the pain Lara had brought others, and _continued_ to bring others, even after that blasted island.

Sam and Jonah were the most prominent in that regard: Yamatai survivors who had suffered because of her. It was no coincidence that they were the last people she really let into her heart.

But then there were all the others too: acquaintances sucked into misfortune when they simply passed a little too close to her.

She was Charybdis in human form.

* * *

Lara had encountered enough inexplicable supernatural entities over the years to accept their existence as fact. Believing in good and bad luck totems was a harder sell. But as much as she'd never admit it out loud, she had for some time theorised that her life was charmed.

At some point, perhaps even before her birth, a deal had been struck. It was a Faustian arrangement, or something out of a Black Forest fairy tale. She dodged death's grasping fingers repeatedly, accomplishing the impossible in the process. The trade-off was that everything she evaded would score a direct hit on those she herself touched.

Get within a certain radius of Lara Croft and danger – at best – or tragedy – at worst – was the result.

It made relationships impossible. Apart from Sam, human connection had never been a priority for her, but now she treated the desire for companionship as an itch to be dismissed with a few scratches. A couple of nights spent spooning with another warm human body was all she could realistically permit.

It was silly and embarrassingly superstitious, but she found herself keeping her distance as much as possible to keep everyone safe.

Everyone, including herself.

She reasoned that when enough people betray and-or try to kill you, distrust is the natural result. Over the years she'd felt wariness accumulate, like layer upon layer of hard, ugly scar tissue. And just like that replacement skin, she'd grown stiff and defensive.

Her attitude was that others could take her or leave her.

 _A misanthrope is born._

Among strangers, she was typically cool, unable to hide her cynicism about their intentions; their very nature. They, in turn, would misinterpret her emotional armour as arrogance, frost over and resist her requests for assistance.

There were obvious consequences of that.

Lara had become reluctant to engage with other people whenever possible. The increasing amount of time she spent alone though further eroded her social skills. And that deficiency manifested in a multitude of ways, from the comical to the dangerous.

She talked to herself in public sometimes, confirming the "Crazy Croft" murmurs.

She was impatient and irritable.

Her first stage solution during conflict resolution was reaching for her pistols.

Realising how antisocial her behaviour had become, she retreated further. Into mountains. Jungles. Caves. Tombs. Ocean bottoms.

So the cycle continued.

 _Turning and turning in the widening gyre…_

As a result, she'd come to prize self-sufficiency in all aspects – from stitching herself up to hastily assembling a shelter out of tree branches.

Which reminded her that she really needed to finish her skipper's training so that she no longer needed to rely on shifty bastards like the captain who was waiting for her above. The Cypriot Turk looked like he was permanently greased up for a bout of oil wrestling. She really disliked him, even before she felt his eyes caressing her neoprene-clad curves. Still, she had long ago accepted that surly, reclusive rule breakers attracted a certain kind of contractor. And he was the only seaman back at port willing to take her to her coordinates. All of the other boat operators had waved her away with varying degrees of politeness.

It had worked out in the end though. She was here, hunting for answers in the Mediterranean south of Cyprus. Rummaging for another piece of the great Immortality puzzle, in what felt like a box containing a dozen dismantled jigsaws.

Her peers didn't have the patience for it, which was probably why they dismissed her as yet another lunatic fringe archaeologist.

At least she had money now. Embarking on this expedition would have been a nightmare in the past. Accepting her inheritance had made her life considerably easier. It wasn't limited to the matter of available resources either. With her claimed fortune and title, she'd also earned the label "eccentric". Overnight she'd become a rich weirdo in the eyes of society, as opposed to a poor crazy girl who desperately needed psychological help.

It never ceased to amaze her the amount of respectability – or, more accurately, eye-rolling tolerance – a few extra pounds in her bank account could buy.

* * *

Something snagged her eye. About ten feet down, a dark blocky shape jutted from the uneven seabed. Even protruding at an angle, it was a little too geometric to have been created by Mother Nature's undisciplined hand.

Lara slowly exhaled, emptying her lungs to descend without the need to vent air from her inflator hose. She equalised her ears twice before settling into a horizontal position within arm's reach of the object.

She could control her buoyancy with precision. It hadn't always been like that, but her hours underwater had racked up over the years. She'd been a qualified diver since her teens, when her school offered a basic open water course.

God, she remembered how proud Roth had looked when she presented her certification card to him. That had made trips on the Endurance during school and uni holidays a lot more fun. They'd always climbed together and suddenly they could dive together too – with her benefiting from his decades of experience as a Royal Marine Commando and wreck diver.

She still missed him terribly.

He'd taught her so much – more than her own father had time to – but there was still so much he hadn't been able to share.

Not that he would have been contributing much just then. Roth was a salvage expert. He simply hauled things up to the surface. Lara, on the other hand, could identity items on the spot. Even though she hadn't specifically pursued maritime archaeology at uni, the subdiscipline didn't intimidate her.

She stroked a fingertip over the object. A box. Eight inches long, corroded of course, but silver beaten over a wood frame, and inlaid with mosaicked turquoise.

 _Hello, beautiful._

She doubted it was exactly what she sought, but it was a positive sign she was in the right area. She hastily added a location marker to her computer. Then she groped for the knife strapped to her inner shin and returned to her examination.

She was lucky to have found anything. This specific patch of the Mediterranean had been crawling with treasure hunters since a recent earthquake. In the aftermath, recreational divers stumbled on mottled coins, swords and palm-size pottery fragments protruding from the freshly fractured seabed.

An eye blink after their finds appeared online, Lara had snatched up her passport.

She had to get there first, before the looters arrived.

Before, far more importantly, the wrong people realised the significance of what Poseidon had finally released from his fist.

* * *

Lara traced around and under the box's base with the flattened tip of her blade. Confident she'd freed it from all grasping matter, she lifted it. It was heavily encrusted with silver sulphide, especially around the hinges and along the lid join. She'd have to force it open, which she was unwilling to do just then.

Once more floating upright, with her knife re-sheathed, she flipped the artefact over. Immediately she found herself mimicking a bug-eyed cartoon character, double take and all.

Another mottled mosaic in turquoise, but the image was distinct enough.

The Vergina Sun.

It corroborated her research.

When Alexander the Great had ventured east on his great campaign of Persian conquest, the stories that returned were fantastical – encounters with mythical beasts, superhuman accomplishments and the successful location of the Fountain of Immortality. Tale upon tale was added over the centuries, until two dozen contradictory versions of the Romance of Alexander existed. That made the stories easy to discredit.

But what if there was truth there, among the impossible legends and medieval allegories?

What if Alexander had actually found the Water of Life?

He certainly never got to use it, but perhaps he never had time. His death at 32 was sudden and unexpected, and in the aftermath his great Empire building efforts were undone by in-fighting among his generals. With no officially named successor, Alexander's kingdom was divvied up, and things slowly fell apart. Finds and figures faded from historical record.

Among them was Nearchus, one of Alexander's navarchs, and closest friends since boyhood. Although the Cretan had never been suspected of foul play, Plutarch noted that it was Nearchus who dined with Alexander the night before the god king's fatal fever set in.

Lara wasn't normally one for sensationalist political conspiracies – these days she'd rather leave that to The History Channel – but the more she read, the more things slotted into place. While Alexander was thrashing on his death bed in Babylon, Nearchus dispatched a veteran marine unit back to Macedonia. The marines' mission and escorted cargo went unlisted. The single recorded instruction when the soldiers boarded a waiting ship in Tyre was that the captain travel as fast as possible.

Unfortunately, the Mediterranean crossing was battered by storms, and Nearchus's vessel never made it as far as Rhodes. It was lost with its crew and whatever else it was carrying in its hold.

The cargo may not have been the Water of Life, Lara had to admit, but it was certainly something of great importance for Nearchus to whisk it away so covertly and hastily.

One of History's overlooked mysteries.

Following the tenuous lead had paid off with the artefact in her hands – in all likelihood, a further clue.

She was still staring at it when her fingers stiffened reflexively.

The box tumbled from her grip.

While she was trying to make sense of her body's reaction, the back of her skull caught alight.


	2. Chapter 2

_Christ, was she having a stroke?_

She grimaced.

Stupid, Lara, for breaking a Golden Rule and diving without a buddy.

She groped for her crown, even as her vision began to darken ominously around the edges and strength drained from her limbs.

 _Do not pass out down here, Croft. Do not._

She no longer had control of her arm.

The realisation set her heart hammering. It was enough of a shock to stab straight through the disorientating, distracting pain.

As the adrenaline flowed and her senses sharpened, she realised the problem.

She couldn't move because something was squeezing her wrist.

She glanced backwards.

Right behind her; restraining her, was a diver. And behind him loomed a further two identical, black-clad figures. A triumvirate of trouble.

 _Sodding hell._

Lara mentally berated herself for letting her guard drop; for letting her concentration dilute in the water as completely as sugar crystals.

She tried to jerk and twist free of the man's grip but the blow to her head had handicapped her. She was too slow; too uncoordinated. While she struggled, the other divers moved in and encircled her.

Her free arm was seized, and tugged behind her.

It didn't stop her squirming but her efforts at resistance felt neutered.

Then all resistance stopped with a second smack to her skull. A speargun butt connected with her temple and the world was sucked into a barrel roll of blackness.

* * *

 _Sam in that damn red bikini of hers. With a whoop, she sprinted past her best friend and leapt from the cliff._

 _Lara had no chance of stopping her, but that didn't prevent an exasperated "Sam!" exploding from her lips._

 _A splash thirty feet below, and then the inevitable wait for her companion to surface._

 _It was pointless of course, but the young Englishwoman still muttered, "Be careful" as she frowned at the water's surface._

 _At least the American girl had jumped feet first. The local boys who'd recommended this spot had insisted the water was deep enough even for competitive cliff diving, but Lara was hesitant to accept their advice outright. They'd all been very drunk the night before, celebrating the girls' arrival in Croatia for Easter break._

 _Still, the guys had been right. With the Adriatic reflecting the warm April sunshine in thousands of shimmering discs, it was beautiful here. And refreshingly removed from the tourist track._

" _Are you coming?"_

 _Sam had surfaced and was grinning up at her friend. She scooped the hair back from her face and added, "Get your ass in here, Lara Croft. It's amazing."_

 _Lara hesitated. Her flatmate had coaxed her into a teal bikini so she was already feeling self-conscious. The bloody thing was sure to come loose the instant she hit the water. She cringed.  
Further adding to her paralysis were her strong self-preservation instincts. They railed against the possibility of their owner flinging herself off a precipice. So much so, in fact, that they'd set her trembling._

" _Lara!" the film student called. "Don't make me come up there and push you."_

" _Okay, okay. God. Keep your cossie on."_

 _The English girl retreated a half dozen steps from the ledge, loaded all her weight onto her back leg and took a steadying breath._

 _Sam was still encouraging her from below. "You're practically an Olympic diver. Just jump!"_

 _Lara clenched her fists. She let the tension spread up her arms, and then down into her quads and calves._

 _Right, let's do this…_

* * *

She came round to the sensation of being wrestled out of her buoyancy compensator. The mouthpiece remained between her lips, allowing her to breathe, but two pairs of hands scrabbled over her torso, tearing away the Velcro cummerbund and unclipping the other straps.

They had to release her arms to free her from the jacket. She was dimly aware of her limbs floating useless out to either side of her.

Lara Croft's undersea crucifixion.

She tried to concentrate.

Her physical reflexes were impaired but cognitively she was still functioning, despite the searing pain that had teared up her eyes. She could feel her brain ticking over – reflexively assessing her situation and surroundings.

The divers were too well equipped to be grubby, opportunist treasure hunters. Their hand signals had military precision. That meant…

Trinity.

Who else?

 _Shit._

Already?

She had thought she'd have more time. But the bastards were on their game as usual.

* * *

Relieved of her life support system, her arms were pinned behind her once more.

She assessed the threat posed by each of her enemies.

One man restraining her.

A second man two feet to her right, holding a pneumatic speargun in one hand and her BC in the other. She was still tenuously attached to him by her regulator hose. The rubber tube continued to supply air from the BC's mounted tank to her mouthpiece.

She was trying to theorise why exactly they would keep her alive when the third diver loomed before her, with his knife freshly drawn from his thigh holster.

He immediately tugged the regulator from her lips, and sliced through the hose for good measure. She watched the mouthpiece sink useless to the seabed.

 _Well, balls._

Instinct demanded that she hold her breath, but she ignored the wail between her ears. If she panicked, if her throat locked up, she didn't have a chance of surviving. So ever so slowly she continued to expel bubbles.

The bastard before her was smiling. She could tell by the curve of his lips. That's why they hadn't killed her outright. The vindictive shits wanted to see her suffer. They wanted to return to the surface with firsthand stories of how Lara Croft had gone to pieces in her final moments.

She swore she wouldn't give them that satisfaction. At the same time, though, she was aware that her bravado masked genuine fear. Because this wasn't the first time she faced death by drowning.

Behind her scowl, she was scared.

Bloody terrified.

She knew what it was like to have her empty lungs scream – to fight and fight the impulse until her desperate body inhaled water.

But the realisation Trinity wanted her to feel all that sparked something within her. Anger. Defiance. She could feel it within her, burning. The heat was different though from the flame blistering her head. It was the warmth of a hot mug of tea down her gullet on a midwinter's night. It was reassurance and strength.

Things wouldn't end like this. She wouldn't let them.

* * *

She noted that the prick before her didn't sheath his knife. Clearly watching her drown wasn't enough. A few thrusts with that carbon blade into her torso would finish the job.

The Trinity operative tightened his grip and continued to grin. No doubt he'd earn a nice little bonus for exterminating her. She'd been a thorn in the side of his organisation for a while now.

Speaking of thorns in sides…

The agent stabbed at her.

Lara spun, attempting what would have been a hip throw if she was on the surface.

Her legs were still free and her fins provided the momentum she needed.

She felt the blade nick her flank, slicing through the narrow band of flesh between hip and rib. The knife had found her intended mark though. The man behind her wailed, blasting bubbles from his mouth.

His grip on her released as he groped at his punctured abdomen.

Thank God his rebreather apparatus was back-mounted, leaving his front exposed.

Lara elbowed hard, aiming for the same spot he had just been stabbed. She could be malicious too.

The man folded over.

It was the opportunity she needed.

She tugged his mask off. If they handicapped her, she would do the same.

More importantly, she grabbed his double hose regulator and forced the mouthpiece to her lips. The hit of oxygen sent her light-headed. It was that or her concussion was worse than she thought.

It didn't matter just then though; her body gobbled the air. It felt better than an ice cold Coke after a day of desert trekking.

Her reverie was interrupted by a one-two hit of reality. A spear passed between her and the maimed diver.

 _What was this James Bond absurdity?_

She jerked back, dropping the regulator as movement snared the very edge of her peripheral vision. No longer smiling, the first Trinity agent slashed out at her again. This time he caught her bicep.

A cloud of pink exploded from her arm, joining the fine mist escaping from her side.

She just managed to block the operative's wrist as he thrust at her again. And again.

The fight played out in eerie silence and slow motion. Like they were just starting to practice a kata, focusing on form over speed.

But it was no good. She couldn't sustain her defence. Even underwater he maintained a strength advantage over her. His fury further bolstered him.

There was a time for fighting and there was a time for fleeing.

Just then was one of the latter. Before the speargun was reloaded.

Lara raised her knees to her chest and kicked out hard, propelling herself away from the operatives.

Her first move was to put as much distance between herself and the men as possible.

She contemplated her options. She could risk an emergency ascent, but she wasn't sure what that would accomplish. She had little doubt Trinity agents were waiting for her on the surface. Even if they weren't, the trio would catch her and drag her back down to a watery grave.

No. She had to end this now and here. While she could.

Her wounds were bleeding steadily, but given the way they stung like a sonofabitch she could tell they weren't deep enough to be life-threatening. The bigger problem was her air supply.

She'd tried competitive freediving a couple of times. To challenge herself. But that was something she prepared for, mentally and physically. All her efforts were focused on accomplishing that one task. Crucially, she hadn't dipped a toe in the water until her head was in the perfect space.

Her situation just then was worlds' apart. She was hurt, her concentration fragmented and her muscles gobbling precious oxygen as she hauled her body out of threat's range.

She knew she could manage a few minutes underwater at most.

After that…

 _Explore alone. Climb alone. Dive alone. Die alone._

No.

Not today.

She glanced back over her shoulder. The stabbed diver was returning to the surface. The other two Trinity operatives, however, were heading her way; their movements as unhurried as if they were on a leisure dive. There really was no need for haste. Their prey was hurt and ironically corralled by blue infinity.

She spied a tumble of rocks off to her left. It wasn't much but the formation was large enough to offer cover. And right then she would take any opportunity to break line of sight. It might provide the advantage she desperately needed.

* * *

As expected, she'd expended too much energy – and oxygen – during her escape. She sunk down behind the twenty foot strip of stone, all too aware of the building pressure in her chest and throat.

Even with the most conservative venting of air to keep her trachea from seizing, her lungs were approaching emptiness. Her body responded with mounting panic.

Contractions threatened. She knew they'd culminate with her sucking in water if she didn't fight them.

Wonderful. Battling Trinity and herself at the same time was like going into a boxing match with both arms tied behind her back.

She tried to distract herself by scrambling for a plan.

She didn't need the Croft family motto. She already had one – an old staple: _Improvise and survive._

In her current position, the benefit of surprise was limited. The men knew where she had darted. There were two of them. They would be smart about their approach.

The reality was that she'd have a single shot at one operative, with perhaps a millisecond advantage. Then the diver's partner would close in.

That had to be enough.

Time to flirt with Lady Luck again.

She reached for her dive knife.

Her fingers probed an empty scabbard.

In that instant she almost inhaled.

 _Shit. Shit. Shit._

The Trinity goons must have stripped it from her while she was unconscious.

In that moment Lara could see Lady Luck as if they were above water at a party. Luck was a red-head; statuesque and striking in appearance, and notoriously unpredictable in manner. Sipping a Cosmo, she stood across the room from the archaeologist. As Lara advanced her first few steps, the woman lifted her face and stared directly at the brunette. Their eyes locked.

Then Luck smirked and turned her back.


	3. Chapter 3

Truth be told, there was always a part of her that wanted to give up; that had had enough of the crap dice she kept rolling.

It was always there, nagging her to quit. To surrender.

However, there was another part of her that almost always yelled louder. Typically it spoke to her in her own voice. Occasionally she heard Roth.

The instructions were always simple, always one at a time. They functioned like climbing holds. She reached for one, and when she had it, she reached for the next. It kept her focused as opposed to flailing overwhelmed at the sight of an entire mountain above her.

Right then, her first priority was a weapon.

She needed a weapon. Anything.

She clutched at the rocks around her, hoping that a piece would snap off.

No such luck.

As she palmed over them though, she noticed a gap, right at the base, where stone kissed seabed. She began scooping aside handfuls of sand to clear it. So much for an archaeologist's considered touch.

Lara dropped down and peered inside. _Was it actually a cave?_

She expected blackness, but cracks and missing chunks in the rock allowed in enough light to illuminate the gloomy hollow.

She didn't brood over her decision – she was well aware that it could easily be the final mistake of her life.

She grabbed hold of the entrance's stone lip and hauled herself into the space.

If she hadn't spotted the underwater grotto, it was possible her pursuers would miss it. Even if they did notice it, there was no way they would be able to follow with their bulky dive gear.

 _Nice and safe in your own tomb, Lara Croft._

Already the voice in her head had turned defeatist.

 _If you like the sea so much, you can stay down here for good._

The thing was, her rasping internal critic wasn't wrong. Lara didn't know how she was going to survive this particular adventure. Crouched on the ground, she could feel the desperation in her system morphing into a peculiar sort of disconnect.

Death was right there, in the darkness creeping in from all sides of her vision.

She couldn't have more than a minute left.

Her eyes fluttered.

She shook her head.

 _Fuck, Lara, keep it together._

Her palms skimmed over the floor of her sanctuary, and brushed something just beneath the sandy surface.

She wasn't sure if she was hallucinating, but she swept aside granules and shell fragments and everything else that had collected in the waterlogged basement. Her fingertips traced over edges, and then in her hands she held a kopis sword.

It was so blunted and corroded it was likely to shatter the instant it hit anything, but it was something.

* * *

Shadows passed in front of the entrance. The divers.

Lara dragged herself to the opening and looked out.

Her improvised ruse had worked. Floating three feet up, the Trinity operatives were flummoxed by her disappearance. They looked to each other, and the speargun thug shrugged.

Hand signals were exchanged that she interpreted as instructions to circle the rock formation and hunt for her.

As the men parted, Lara made her move.

She was out of time.

Her supply of air was exhausted. And with it, her reserve of caution.

She slithered out of her hiding place.

She was impossibly clumsy now. Groggy on carbon dioxide.

She had one action left in her. Squeezing the kopis gave her a miniscule amount of focus as her body continued to shut down.

Lara at full strength would have targeted the diver with the speargun – first eliminating the threat of ranged attack. But he was too far away.

Her knife-wielding torturer was closer.

Lara braced her legs against the seafloor and sprang.

She was down to seconds. Her vision had deteriorated further; it felt like she was still in the cave.

She collided with the diver while he was half turned from her.

She'd been right about the sword. It was too weak to pierce anything. She'd combined weapon thrust with tackle, and that was enough force for the ancient blade to fracture the instant it struck the man's ribs.

Still, she'd delivered a horrible bruise, and the shock was enough to loosen her foe's knife grip.

Lara grabbed the hilt from his fingers.

She stabbed at his neck.

Then she was fighting in red. And black. And red again.

Remora-like, she latched onto the diver's body as he thrashed and gurgled.

At some point he knocked her mask askew, but she couldn't remember when that happened. Then again, it made little difference. She was blind.

The rodeo ride started to taper off.

Working by faulty touch, Lara dragged her uncooperative fingers over the diver's chest. Eventually she found a corrugated hose.

She hooked it and listlessly pulled it towards her face. A silicone bite tab brushed the corner of her mouth. She allowed her lips to part.

Then she finally let her body inhale.

* * *

Lara arched as if she were having a seizure.

 _Christ, it hurt._

The dry air travelled down her throat as a solid rod of ice.

She was choking on it. Practically sobbing.

It wasn't enough for her ravenous lungs. They kept demanding more and more. She was hyperventilating, unable to find a healthy balance between inhalation and exhalation.

Her heart was thrumming; her chest on fire.

It felt like her entire body was returning to life. Which it probably was.

Eventually the ice melted, and the pressure in her chest began to normalise.

The buoyancy of the saltwater took a lot of strain off her limbs but she could feel that she was weak and shaky.

That had been too bloody close.

She was afraid to think how many brain cells she had just killed without the usual accompanying pleasures.

She righted her mask, and exhaled through her nose, tilting her head back and pressing on the glass above her brow until all the water had been expelled.

Her vision restored, she saw the third diver racing towards her in HD clarity.

 _Shit._

The agent raised his speargun and fired.

Lara abandoned her stolen regulator and dove behind the corpse of the first Trinity contractor.

He may have tried to kill her in life, but in death he made an outstanding shield.

A second after the barb embedded in the man's pectoral, Lara yanked it out and sped towards the last operative.

He wouldn't be able to reload before she got to him, and he knew it.

So he was ready when she was within reach. He swung his weapon, hoping to deflect any incoming spear thrust. That was exactly what Lara wanted from him.

With his arm fully extended to his left, she skirted him on the right. Before he could backhand her, she was behind him.

This time she went with something less bloody. She passed the stainless steel rod around the front of the diver's throat, seized the metal in both fists and yanked back and up, right under his jawbone.

 _Die, you bastard._

He elbowed and groped at her but their size difference meant she was safely covered by his bulk.

Still, she wouldn't kill him fast enough this way, especially as she was back to fighting on a single breath.

Maintaining her grip on the spear, she kicked off. Her fins scraped awkwardly against the man's rebreather unit but she was still able to draw her knees up to her chest, and press her heels against the back of her enemy's skull.

She began to straighten out of her balled position.

Pulling with her arms, pushing with her legs.

The man responded with a gurgle. Then he began to flail.

Lara held tight.

* * *

It was weird but at such moments she found herself gazing on her mirror self – the twenty-seven year old who had stuck to The Plan. There had been no catastrophic Yamatai expedition, she'd never put a bullet or an arrow or a climbing axe through someone's skull, and she flat-out dismissed accounts of soul-transferring sorcerer queens as complete nonsense.

In Lara Croft's alternate life, she had her PhD, or at least was well on her way to completing it. When she wasn't completing fieldwork, or holed up in the Archaeology Department building, she maintained a series of odd jobs, including shifts at the Nine Bells, to pay her way. Her inheritance was locked up tight; Croft Manor even tighter. She lived quietly and simply.

Sam was the one off gallivanting most of the time. Lara mostly had the London flat to herself. Her big adventures were when she stayed so late at the library, uni or museum archives that she missed the last tube home.

It was far from dramatic, but she was making her own mark. Every day she put more and more professional distance between herself and her father. People were actually starting to forget that she was the daughter of lunatic Richard Croft. She was gaining respect: her theories were well received by her peers, and a huge part of that hinged on her continual loud insistence that there was a rational explanation behind every myth and mystery.

This Lara Croft was shy but amiable. She got along with people. She never rocked the boat. She was a survivor of loss too, of course, but a stoic type in comparison to the scarred, cynical adventurer at that moment straining to drown a man.

 _Two roads diverged in a yellow wood…_

Looking at the brunette hunched and happily working at her desk, Lara didn't know if she felt scorn or envy.

The Lara Croft who almost was, was just so damn different.

As if to further emphasise that point for herself, the Tomb Raider snapped her legs out straight.

She wasn't sure if she killed the Trinity operative outright, or turned him into a quadriplegic. She supposed it was irrelevant. Crippled down here, he was dead either way.

Still, she made sure not to pass in front of him as she rummaged through his gear and assessed what was salvageable.

She couldn't risk making eye contact. She couldn't bear the thought of his expression. The same went for her other self; how that girl would look back at her.

The judgement. The horror.

She grimaced. Then she grimaced again in response to the first pangs of returning oxygen starvation. She could beat herself up later.

* * *

The man's rebreather was too cumbersome to remove, and God knows what he'd done with her buoyancy compensator. However, after seizing his speargun and a fresh shaft from his supplies, she did find a small bailout bottle strapped to the left of his primary scuba system.

That would do.

She put the back-up regulator to her lips, performed a blast clear, and breathed.

That was considerably better.

She proceeded to free the miniature tank and tuck it under her arm.

It wasn't ideal but it would see her to the surface.

Without her BC, her ascent was entirely powered by her legs and her lungs.

Inhaling deeply inflated her chest cavity and helped to propel her upwards with minimal expended energy.

She needed to keep her ascent slow for her own safety, but a side effect of the unhurried climb was time to brood.

She'd stopped her pursuers but that didn't mean the latest threat from Trinity was over. She knew well enough what the divers were: low level contractors sent to follow her, steal her finds and kill her. Afterwards, they were supposed to report back to someone higher up the organisational food chain.

If she wanted Trinity off her tail – at least for a while – she would have to strike their pyramid at the exact spot where the raw brick ended and the dazzling limestone casing began.


	4. Chapter 4

The operative manning the Zodiac had his back to her as she surfaced alongside the craft.

"Gave you some trouble, did she?" he chortled.

"In a manner of speaking."

He spun at the sound of her voice.

Just what she was waiting for.

She lifted her stolen speargun, and fired.

The barb caught the agent just below his ribcage, angling up.

It was true what they said. The weapon's velocity was substantially stronger out of the water.

The man stared at the spear protruding from his middle, staggered a couple of steps side to side, and crumpled.

Discarding her gun and air tank, Lara let her body sink a foot into the sea. With a final combined thrust of arms and legs, she surged upwards. The effort got her hips clear of the water.

Her fists clenched around the inflatable's side rope, and she locked out her elbows. Finally, teeth gritted and growling, she heaved her lower half onto the boat.

With that, she fell into the slatted interior with the grace of a dead tuna.

 _Lara Croft: world-class gymnast._

How she had briefly flirted with the plan of swimming straight to shore, she didn't know. It was probably the freshly smothered brain cells.

She was trembling with fatigue. Without the water's buoyancy, her limbs were lead. Still, they were functional enough that she was able to remove her mask and fins.

While she gave her cramped quads and calves a few minutes' break, she started groping over the dead man next to her. The only thing worth taking was his pistol – always preferable to a speargun as far as she was concerned.

* * *

Lara battled to her feet.

She had to pilot the craft back to land. It had been a bit of a swim to reach it in the first place, further draining her after her aquatic misadventure. The operatives hadn't exactly dropped anchor right above her. That was probably why they'd been able to sneak up on –

Movement in the very edge of her peripheral vision.

She arced her gun to the right, turning her body with the action.

Facing her, also with his pistol raised, was the stabbed first diver.

Lara had forgotten all about him.

She grimaced. Sometimes she was a little too hasty to discount threats.

This particular foe was propped up against the bow, with his legs splayed out before him. A bloody compress was clutched to his chest. White-faced and oiled with sweat, he looked on the brink of passing out.

His physical weakness was countered though by the intensity of his glare.

Lara had worn that expression herself. She knew what it meant.

Even hobbled, a mentally focused enemy was always more dangerous than one at full bodily strength.

The diver's finger contracted infinitesimally on the trigger.

Lara matched his action, extending the stalemate.

She knew what her opponent was now: a contractor with ambition. That, or he was running on distilled revenge.

A further possibility tunnelled upwards in Lara's mind, triggering a scowl as it breached the surface.

The man was just as likely acting out of desperate self-preservation. She was notorious within Trinity and among its hirelings. Uneasy whispers insisted that Lara Croft brought with her death. Even if you were critically wounded it was better to fight in your final moments. Vicious and cruel, she would show no mercy.

She battered down the third theory as if she were wielding a shovel. As she pounded, a part of her continued to claim that the _only_ reason she was still alive was because the agent hadn't had a clean shot until she stood.

He would have put a bullet through her head in an eye blink if he'd had an earlier opportunity.

He simply didn't.

Now the two of them – bleeding and weakened both – were trapped together within a bubbled instant of kill or be killed.

* * *

Lara exhaled slowly.

There was a big difference between taking life in a split-second of self-defence, and proactively executing someone to accomplish an objective.

It took a special something to push her into performing the latter. And afterwards – whether it took minutes, hours or days – she always felt sick to her stomach.

To her soul.

She couldn't forget them, even if she hadn't been looking into their eyes when it happened.

They joined her tally like all the others, lining up behind Anubis and Ammit to wait for the day her heart was weighed.

They were also the ones whose faces seeped into her nightmares. Too often she would wake, and see them standing at the foot of her bed, cot or sleeping bag. That would send her groping for the Remington 1911 she kept under her pillow.

Then, realising she was pointing Roth's old gun at thin air, she would drop her face into her palms, and grind away at her eye sockets with the heel of her hands.

 _Another Crazy Croft indeed._

She didn't want this man to join her shadow gallery.

They could both walk – or, more likely – limp away from this moment.

As much as for him as for her, she frowned, "You don't have to do this."

It felt like it had been years since she last spoke. Her voice sounded strange. Everything sounded strange after the Mediterranean's muffling effect on her ears.

A twitch in the man's cheek gave him away.

As he fired, Lara flung herself sideways.

It was a goalie's gamble.

Eyes closed, she squeezed the trigger at the same instant.

She hit the deck hard. So hard that for a moment she was unable to distinguish the hurt of impact from anything more serious.

She just lay there for a minute, face down, while her heart found its regular rhythm and her pain receptors reset. She processed every sensation, and found there was nothing new to join the smarting knife wounds and throbbing headache. Tentative fingers crawling over her torso confirmed it.

 _A charmed life, Lara Croft._

Suddenly she was aware of the silence. Apart from her rasped breathing, and the lap of water against the boat, there was nothing. No more gunshots.

Tentatively, she pushed herself onto her knees, and turned.

She startled. The diver was still glaring at her, with his gun pointed at her chest.

Then blood dribbled from his lips.

His eyes glazed well before his arm dropped.

Lara slumped back against the side of the inflatable, completely finished.

 _It was done._

She let her pistol – a Glock she noticed – slip from her palm.

In the end, it had been self-defence but it didn't lessen the weight in her gut. As her eyes closed, she muttered, "You didn't have to."

Beneath the exhaustion, she could feel rage building. It moved through her in a swell just like the one gently lifting the Zodiac at that moment.

She was angry at the Trinity operatives for making her act; furious about how she was forced, yet again, to tap into her deep, dark reserves of savagery to survive.

At least she knew the perfect vent for that.

* * *

Emre Boztas was sitting in the back room of his shop – the pokey space that tourists occasionally scuffled into when they were looking for a dive boat to charter.

Just like that snooty English bitch had two days before.

He was vaguely remorseful about her fate. What a waste – a woman with a body like that. Especially that arse. He had wanted to take a bite out of it. By now crabs and other seabed scavengers were the only ones who would enjoy that privilege.

But, hey, the American had paid substantially better. And all Boztas had to do was share the woman's coordinates and sail off once she'd been under for five minutes.

The way he saw it, he wasn't doing anything wrong. She was the thief and fool. She got what she deserved.

Boztas shrugged, sipped on his shot glass of zivania and returned to the sports pages he was reading. He really should have bet something on that UEFA game.

"Excuse me."

His head shot up.

It was _her_. Standing in the doorway to his office.

A half dozen realisations slapped him at the same time, forcing his brain in every direction.

How did she get in? It was after 7 – the store was closed and locked.

More importantly, why wasn't she dead? The American had assured Boztas that he would never see those pouty lips and that bouncy little ponytail again.

Yet here she was. Clenching a Glock in her fist.

If he believed in them, he might have thought she was a ghost – one of those vengeful spirits from Japanese horror movies. She looked like a corpse. Her hair hung limp, and a good percentage of it had escaped its elastic band. She was still in her wetsuit, but it was torn over her side and arm, exposing cuts that looked barely coagulated. They glistened with black blood that could pass for tar.

The woman's face was the most terrifying part of her appearance, though.

He could tell she had a drop or two of the Mediterranean in her by the olive tint of her skin. At that moment, though, she was pasty-white. Her lips were as colourless as the rest of her face, with the exception of a plum coloured bruise creeping around the left side of her forehead.

He thought she'd been cold when she first walked into his shop. Now everything about her was ice: her eyes, her expression.

She spoke Turkish with a clipped, obviously British accent. "I'd like to speak to the manager."

Boztas straightened in his seat, mustering as much physical authority as possible.

"We're closed. Come back tomorrow."

She ignored him. "I have a complaint."

She stepped into the room.

He waved his arm at her, and growled, "Go away."

In response, she reached behind herself with her free hand and closed the door. Her fingers nimbly found the lock.

She didn't take her eyes from his throughout the action. Ominously, he saw a spark of flame in the brown of her irises.

She murmured, "You sold me out."

He snorted. "You're wrong."

"Am I?" She arched an eyebrow.

He didn't like where this was going. Something about her manner was _off_. Worryingly off.

Well, no more of the bitch's games.

"Get the fuck out of here!" he bellowed.

She raised her pistol and took a further step towards him.

He _really_ didn't like where this was going.

He thrust his chin out at her. "You come in here making accusations and pointing a gun at my head. Just like you arrogant English."

The woman was standing directly before his desk now. If he had stoked her temper further, he couldn't tell. She hid it well. Her face remained blank.

She reached out, snatched up his shot glass and swallowed the rest of his drink. She didn't cough or splutter or grimace like tourists usually did. She simply made an appreciative "hmm" at back of her throat as she stared at the empty container.

Then she placed the glass back on the table, refilled it from the bottle at hand and downed the contents. After swallowing, she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth.

Boztas could feel his limbs stiffening with fury. Was he supposed to sit all night as her hostage while she got drunk?

He glared, "Get that thing out of my face."

The bitch cocked her head. "Excuse me. I forgot my manners."

He wasn't sure how she did it. One second he was in his seat. The next his chair was flung halfway across the room, and he was on his knees; his cheek and palms flattened on the surface of his desk.

He was pinned like that, with his face under her clawed hand, and the gun barrel pressed to his temple.

His eyes widened as he tried to resist – and failed. She was freakishly strong. He had at least 15 kilograms on her, but he couldn't move. He blamed it on the shock to his system.

Still, he wasn't going to give her the satisfaction of seeing him squirm. He sneered, "Fuck you, whore. What are you going to do? Just some girl all on her own."

He couldn't see her face from his position, but he could hear her. "You disgust me."

He refused to be intimidated. He chuckled, "You're nothing. Soft. Weak. You don't have the balls."

"Do you really think that's wise?" The Glock pushed harder into his flesh as the woman's breath brushed over his ear. "Taunting me when I'm the one with a gun and you're the one with testicles to lose?"

He hadn't thought about that.

He tried to keep the fear from his voice when he responded, "You won't kill me."

"You're sure of that?"

Suddenly her weight was on him; her knee and shin digging into his near forearm. In that same instant her fingers released his skull and clamped around his far wrist. He stared at his captured hand, before daring to turn his head and glower at her.

Even in the awkward position of half straddling the desk, the brunette continued to look impassive. She sighed, "You're right. I'm not going to kill you. But that doesn't mean you're not still going to talk."

"Go to Hell," he spat.

She removed the pistol from his temple and pressed it against the back of his baby finger.

"You're going to tell me everything about my betrayal, starting with an exact description of who you sold me out to."

Boztas jeered. "You don't scare me."

The woman blinked at him. And fired.

Boztas howled.

When he stumbled out of the white fog of pain, he found he was snotty and sobbing.

He tried to pull away but she continued to hold him in place.

As much as he was afraid to look, his gaze was drawn to the desk. The action was as compulsive as if his pupils were metal and the table magnetised.

His stomach roiled at the sight of his hand. Where his finger used to be was a mess of splattered blood, bone and chunks of flesh in a dark, sticky soup. It was like someone had exploded a cup of venison sausage stew.

He started rasping, "Fuck, fuck, fuck..."

He felt nauseous; light-headed.

He needed something – anything – to distract him from the mutilation.

So he looked to the woman.

She hadn't flinched. In fact, she appeared bored. Completely indifferent to his suffering.

Once their gazes met, she rolled her eyes to the ceiling. She tapped the Glock's muzzle to her lips as she mused, "I wonder what will run out first: your fingers or my bullets?"

Even with his ears still ringing from the gunshot inches from his head, the apathy in her voice was clear.

Boztas was ready to spit at her. He was going to screech that she was a crazy whore.

What he produced in reality was a nonsensical stammer that started deep in his throat. It dribbled from his mouth like the piss down his thigh.

The woman looked revolted at that. At least for an instant. Then her expression set hard once more.

She pressed her pistol to the captain's ring finger this time.

Boztas gaped at her; tried to find the humanity in her pupils. That sinister combination of beauty and darkness – the closest thing that compared was moonlight on inky ocean waters.

"Puh – Pleeaaase," he stammered.

The brunette's eyes narrowed as her finger teased the trigger.

"Start. Talking."


End file.
